I know it's not easy to accelerate, but I'm having a math crisis. As soon as I got my oldest in a good place with his math, the tears started with my twins. They did 3 years of Montessori so I'm thinking they might like a more hands on approach.

They are at least MG, and liked math ok last year, we did a combo of miquon and singapore. Miquon just got too frustrating for me to figure out, so I dropped it. Maybe I should give it another chance....

My DD is doing singapore this year and she's just not engaged. I haven't really been teaching her much because we are taking things slow since she's in vision therapy and the exercises take a lot out of her. Maybe we should just play games? She just says she doesn't like it, it's boring. (It's not too easy, she needs help with a lot of stuff. We don't do a lot of problems either, because of the vision stuff.)

My DS is a lot quicker with math, so I was planning on accelerating him through MM to get him to BA 3. (I don't want to start BA 2 because he will definitely outpace the books.) He hates MM. I don't love it myself, but we own it so I was planning on sucking it up and getting through it.

They are not accelerated in math at this point, because we have been jumping around so much and I haven't gotten in a groove. I think they cold accelerate but like I said, we can't even land on a curriculum we like.

I guess I just want something fun and engaging and was hoping I could throw money at the problem.

Anyways, does anyone on the AL board use it with GT kids? How do you like it? Pros and cons? TIA!

My daughter did well with levels A and B. We did A as play-based; my daughter didn't even know there was a book and we skipped all writing and worksheets in it. She just thought we had fun math toys that I pulled out and used to teach her interesting things. B was done closer to "as written", with notable alterations for pacing. I am mathy and didn't find it too difficult to accelerate, but it's heavily scripted and I know a lot of people do find it difficult to alter. (It doesn't help that most RS proponents will insist that any alteration is a complete affront to the program, so it's like reinventing the wheel.) The lessons tend to be set up so that you have 1-3 lessons introducing a topic (but your kid doesn't need to really get it), then a few lessons of another topic, then several lessons diving into the previously introduced topic during which mastery is expected. Once you see the pattern, you can figure out when you can move on, need to do more, or can compress multiple lessons into one.

The games can be a pro or a con. Some kids love them. They are time consuming, no question there. And my daughter hated almost every single one of them. She's quick to see through "games" that are really just disguised drill, and that's the purpose of these: to replace flash cards or worksheet drill for math facts. Partway through B, she just flat out asked me to drop the games in favor of flash cards.

The manipulatives can also be a pro or a con. She loved them and they worked wonders for A and most of B. Fortunately for me, the abacus was generally her favorite of the manips, and it's the most heavily used. But somewhere around the end of B or beginning of C, she started having better instincts for how to do the math on paper and she found the manipulatives slow and annoying. We do still have the abacus and still pull it out alongside other math at times to better see a concept.

I think her moving away from the manipulatives is what tipped the balance against RS for her during level C. She *hated* that level and hated math altogether because of it. I disliked the level because the amount of repetition of topics skyrocketed upwards in C. Then when I did the placement test again, considering going back to RS after an extended math break, I found she was a single topic away from being able to skip D. I couldn't see buying an entire level just so I could sort through a pile of repetition and one new concept, so we were done with RS.

We are using D this year. My 7yo chose it himself and I'm honoring that, but I'm still iffy on it. He really likes the games, hate manipulatives. His idea of using them is holding one in his hand while he does the work mentally.

We do adapt the lessons. Some days, like today, took about 5 minutes to do the warm up, talk and worksheet (working on perimeter). He spent the next hour reading a few chapters of LoF and playing Sudoku. If tomorrow didn't have a review scheduled I just would have merged two lessons together, skipping through until he needed to work on something. We probably will skip after the review until the next one, using them as bench marks. I took the time this summer to read over every lesson and see the big picture in my head, and while I think this may be an easy year for him, I'm not going to say right off that he won't continue the program. He likes it, it gets done, and it lets him play with math. That's a win in my book.

We've used A & are about to finish B. We own C, but may or may not end up using it in its entirety due to pacing & the fact that it really doesn't dig into DS' deep interest in multiplication/division.

RightStart was GREAT for DS at the preschool level. In PreK it began getting a bit slow, but I condensed & it was still fine. He loves the games. Now it's frustratingly slow. DS is requesting more & more outside information / stimulation.

I have a friend loaning me Singapore 2A along with CWP & IP to see if that will be a better fit for us at this point. I'll also be ordering Beast Academy 2nd grade soon.

I guess I just want something fun and engaging and was hoping I could throw money at the problem.

Maybe it would help to take the list of curriculum objectives, then find ways to engage your dd by topic or thread. How are her mental visual skills? Is she finding it helpful to start with the concrete?

anywho, if you want to list an objective, people have listed in past threads ways to do via games and projects and real life. at this time of year, perhaps a halloween game could be an engaging project. I know I thought projects were time consuming, right up till my kid had one that led him to learn many skills.

DS#2: A, B, and half of C in 2nd edition, then switched back to 1st edition and did C and D.

DS#3: A-C in 1st edition, presently working on D in 2nd edition. Undecided if we'll continue on with E. I'll let you know in a few months

I think RS might be worth a try. I bet your twins would fly through it, at least at first, but I wouldn't necessarily dismiss it as a possibility just yet, especially with so many other programs turning out to be poor fits. Have you looked at the samples online?

You'd want to do placement tests, of course, but I've found that the older they are when they start, the faster they move through the material. My DS#1 (MG) did A in 1 month and B in 5ish months. He did them quickly, but he needed the content in both levels, so I'm glad I started him at the beginning. RS1 C took him longer, a full 9 months. 1st edition C is significantly meatier than 2nd edition C.

I could write a novel on the differences between the 1st (RS1) and 2nd (RS2) editions, my opinions, and why, but the gist is that my preference is to use RS1 for A-C and then switch to RS2 for D (and on?). This path eliminates the repetitive RS2 C and RS1 D levels and a lot of the time-wasting assessments for young ALs. I have had zero problems compacting and accelerating either edition of RS and haven't found it to move too slowly (HG+ DS#3 did A-C in 11 months of 3ish days/ wk instruction).

Things to consider:

Few worksheets in A and B. More in C. Lots in D+ -- Few worksheets was perfect for my oldest (with a fine motor delay and dysgraphia). I scribed for him in higher levels. The scarcity of worksheets was frustrating for DS#3. I supplemented with MEP just to give him the worksheets he was begging for.

Hands on, lost of manipulatives -- This is a major, major pro for my DS#3, neutral to positive for DS#1, and a con for ADHD DS#2, who only got distracted by them and really didn't want to touch them.

Card games for fact drill -- All of my kids have enjoyed the games just for the sake of them being games and none has ever wanted to do fact drill any other way. DS#1 still pays Corners for fun.

Expensive -- 'Nuff said.

Large auditory component -- This suited my DS#1 well since he's an auditory learner. DS#2 and DS#3 require(d) some adaptations because they are visual/kinesthetic learners and the verbal questions would go in one ear and right out the other.

Thank you for your thoughts, Lace. My DD is visual and kinesthetic so I'll have to do some thinking. Thanks again!

It's just the warm-ups and conclusions that are often all verbal. The rest of the lesson is talking with the student, but includes manipulatives and/or a worksheet, so there's something to look at. The warm ups in D (2nd edition) are actually presented worksheet-style fairly often. I can't remember if that's true for A-C in RS2, but RS1's A-C warm ups are written to be almost exclusively verbal (and there's no "in conclusion" section in RS1).

I think my DS#3 would much rather have a text book to read than have to listen to me talk though, lol. Mixing BA with its guides written to the student and MEP's self-explanatory worksheets in with RS lessons guided by me has been a good combination here.

Ok, I think I'm back to a no on this one. I don't want anything that moves that slowly.

FWIW, DS is ~3yrs ahead in math so I would be majorly accelerating ANY program. It feels "slow" to me because it's the only program we've used & he's the only learner I've used it with. I don't think RightStart is actually any slower than other math programs.

FWIW, DS is ~3yrs ahead in math so I would be majorly accelerating ANY program. It feels "slow" to me because it's the only program we've used & he's the only learner I've used it with. I don't think RightStart is actually any slower than other math programs.

Other programs are easier to accelerate though. RS is notorious for going slow and being cumbersome to accelerate.

That being said, I'm not sure how much acceleration my DD can handle at the moment anyways. She's going through vision therapy and the homework takes a lot out of her, so slow might be what we need.

I don’t know that my son is gifted but he’s quick in math. We have accelerated Right Start and we have finished about two levels a year. I haven’t done all the games. I have done the ones he liked and the ones I felt he needed. We skip the review chapters at the beginning of each book. We are in RS E now about 1/3 though. So far I think it is working fine We had previously tried Singapore and MM and they were torture for my kid.

I routinely skip warm-up sections that I know he doesn't need, combine lessons together that go quickly, and break up lessons that we need more time on. We rarely play games and my son only uses manipulatives when I feel that he would benefit from it. I've had no problem modifying the program to suit our needs.